Posts Tagged goal setting

Many people wake up a day or two after New Year’s Day with a familiar but different type of hangover. They often experience the same hangover each year at the same time, but do nothing to prevent it. While headaches and upset stomachs are symptoms of alcohol-induced hangovers, the hangover I’m talking about is marked by regret and resolve, and it’s caused by misusing the previous year.

People suffering from this type of hangover call my office seeking a professional change, and they clog up my gym as they seek a physical change. Both happen much more frequently at the beginning of the year and all but disappear by summer. Why is that?

New Year – New Day

Despite the weather in most locales, January is a time of hope and optimism. Many have just spent at least a few moments in introspection through the holidays, and few are completely happy with the results of the past year. The new year represents an opportunity to erase past failures and to make positive changes. That’s what drives people to pick up the phone and call me.

My role as a recruiter, AKA headhunter, is to find my clients the talent they need in order to be successful. This puts me in touch with highly talented and successful people every day of the work week. Most tell me that they’re not interested in a professional change, but I believe that many of them are being dishonest. They might desire a change, but they aren’t ready to commit to one. Often, when are ready to commit to a change, weeks, months or years later, the opportunity I brought to them isn’t available.

Making a change is difficult. Try sitting in a different spot at church or in a classroom or meeting room. Most of us, myself included, don’t want to do it. We sit where we sit, and that is it. Moving from our traditional spot exposes us to uncertainty, and uncertainty is almost always uncomfortable. When we struggle with a discomfort as benign as switching seats, how are we going to do when facing a much more daunting discomfort, like switching jobs? Most of us are going to say that we’re not interested and continue on our not-so-merry way.

When we resist making changes that we think might benefit us, we might successfully avoid discomfort, but we can’t dodge regret. We might condition ourselves to live with regret, but it doesn’t go away without change. Most of us will wait until the discomfort of regret exceeds the discomfort of change before we will commit to change.

The people who call me in January seeking a professional change didn’t just wake up and realize that they needed to do something different in order to achieve their goals; they have likely been contemplating the call for months or maybe even years before they actually pick up the phone. The new year on the calendar simply amplified the discomfort of regret. We shouldn’t have to wait for a new year to create a better situation for ourselves.

Each day represents an opportunity to make positive changes, and there are many more new days than new years. Instead of setting a New Year’s resolution, consider setting a New Day’s Resolution. If you woke up this morning still suffering from the regret hangover, do something today to make tomorrow’s morning better. You won’t regret it.

I cut a lot of firewood when I was a kid. Well, I didn’t actually do the cutting. Because I was too young and clumsy to handle the chainsaw, my job was to carry logs to the truck. These logs ranged in weight from those I could carry with one hand and toss into the truck from a few feet away to those that I rolled to the truck and tried to coax in without smashing my toes. None of them were labeled with their weight, so I didn’t always know if I was strong enough to move the log in front of me, but I always had to try. A scowling father with a revved-up chainsaw cast a pretty large shadow over any self-pity I could muster.

I don’t move logs any more. I move weights around the gym, and they are all marked, so I can stay in my comfort zone. While clearly marked weights are obviously a necessity in the gym, I’ve recently noticed that the convenience of knowing the weight also makes complacency very convenient too. I know what I can lift, so I lift that. When I was lifting logs, I didn’t know what I could lift without trying. In the woodlots, I pushed myself out of necessity. In the gym, I don’t have to push myself, unless I really want to.

I discovered this on a machine designed to work upper back muscles. Someone left the machine without unloading their weights, which is a huge pet peeve of mine, unless, of course, they leave the machine with the exact weight I want. Usually, that doesn’t happen though, and it didn’t happen the other day on that machine. Whoever was there before me left ten more pounds than I wanted on each side. After swearing at the unidentified offender under my breath, I started to take off the extra weight, but then caught myself. Maybe it was time for me to challenge myself with a little extra weight. Maybe God had put on his strength coach hat and wanted me to push myself.

I left the extra weight on the machine and predictably struggled through my sets. Whereas I could regularly hit my rep goals of 10-10-8-8 with my old weight, I struggled to reach half of those reps with each of the four sets. I had invited defeat into my workout, and it was uncomfortable – uncomfortable but not unproductive. Sooner or later, if I keep pushing myself, I expect to handle the extra weight.

As often happens as I daydream between sets, I started thinking about how we face similar challenges in everyday life. Maybe a client or boss expects more effort than we anticipated, yet we proceed stubbornly in our comfort zone, predictably falling short of our potential. Maybe we have the opportunity to volunteer for something new, but decline because we’re not sure if we’re capable of the effort. Maybe a friend or family member needs our time, and we fall short because we don’t want to add any more responsibility to our schedule. When we limit ourselves to our comfort zone, we limit our potential.

I tried to stay in my comfort zone at the beginning of my first sales job, and had predictably poor results. I only wanted to call on prospects who I was fairly certain would buy from me, and I insisted on exhaustive research before I called them. I also wanted to be an expert on my product, so I could dazzle my prospects with my product acumen. Research and product knowledge are important in sales, but not as important as persistence and risk-taking to a new sales rep in a new industry. When you are trying to build your clientele, you want to make as many contacts as you possibly can, establish a rapport and solve their problems with your products.

By researching prospects who never bought from me and spending selling time studying my product, I didn’t make as many contacts as I needed, and I earned many meetings in the sales manager’s office where he would tell me exactly that. Meanwhile I watched colleagues with a tenuous at best knowledge of their prospects and our products hit their goals and cash fat commission checks. Finally, the light went off, and I switched from weight-room mode to woodlot mode, and started lifting logs that could smash my feet. Before long, I was closing deals that I never would have found if I stayed in my comfort zone.

Back in the weight room, I had grown complacent, using my age and physical condition to excuse my sub-par effort. Now, when I encounter an extra, but not unreasonable amount of weight on a machine, I accept the challenge. This means I fail a lot more, but I know that I’ll benefit from the challenge, if I don’t give up.

Try that the next time your comfort zone is challenged. Lift that log, even if it might smash your toes. It’s the only way you’ll grow.

“Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.”– Ralph Waldo Emerson

All-state, all-conference, all-district, all-American . . . as sports seasons draw to a close, recognition lists start to appear. The recognition is great for those who receive it, but what about those whose names don’t appear on the lists?

That happened to my son last year. He had a great football season – better than his sophomore season when he received honorable mention, but his name rose no higher during his junior season. Naturally, we looked at the list of honorees, and just as naturally, we felt he belonged. It was frustrating and heart-breaking, but just like all of the other frustrating and heart-breaking experiences of the past couple of years, it taught us a lot.

Most of all, it taught us how to deal positively with disappointment, which is important, because disappointment is part of life. This is especially true if you challenge yourself with risks. The higher you reach, the more you expose yourself to a gut punch like disappointment.

For athletes:

First, you have no idea what is going on behind the scenes. Voters often have limited data when they make their selections, and they rely on what others have said about your performance. That can be your coach, an opposing coach or the media, and they all have biases, even though most try really hard to suppress those biases. Furthermore, inclusion on many of the lists is dependent on your team’s success. The better a team does, the more players are included in post-season honors, but even that has a limit. Voters are reluctant to include too many from a single team or even a single region, so if you are in the shadows of super-stars, it’s hard to shine. This is even more challenging for underclassmen, as seniority seems to figure in the calculations. Sometimes, those factors work in your favor, and sometimes, they work against you.

Second, it probably doesn’t matter as much as you think it does. My son feared that a lack of all-state recognition during his junior season would hurt his college recruiting in the following year. It didn’t. We can’t recall a single instance where it was even mentioned. Recruiters don’t rely on others to do their evaluations, and things turned out just fine for my son when the recruiters had a chance to do their own evaluation of him. Plus, not everyone pays attention to sports news. Everyone who appreciated your performance still appreciates your performance.

You are not alone. Hundreds of athletes felt slighted when they saw the lists, and many were justified in that feeling. Not every deserving athlete will be included. In fact, there are probably better athletes than you who were left off the list.

For the rest of us:

Throughout life, you are going to be evaluated and compared to others. Sometimes, you’re going to get that promotion, and other times, it’s going to go to the guy down the hall. Often, you can’t control that. The one thing you can control is your reaction.

Don’t let rejection get you down. Your peers and key decision-makers are watching your reaction. Be gracious, and then be silent in your resolve to prove that you belong. Now, when the iron is hot, is the time to make your mark.

Do an honest self-evaluation, once the pity and frustration subside. You might not be able to be objective immediately after disappointing news. When you can be objective, look for areas for personal growth. No matter where you are in life, there is always room for growth. Become a master at evaluating yourself. It’s never a good idea to leave evaluation to those who don’t know your potential.

Set goals for yourself. Write them down. Hold yourself accountable and celebrate your successes in reaching them. Goals affirm your progress, and unlike outside evaluations, you have complete control of them.

The mood in our house was markedly better this year when the football post-season awards were announced, but we know that last year’s disappointment won’t be the last. Next time, though, we’ll be better prepared to turn it into a positive. That we can control.

After my sophomore year of college, I set a goal to graduate magna cum laude. I had done the math, and figured out that I could make it if I did everything right. To remind myself of that goal, I created a big sign saying “MAGNA CUM LAUDE” and hung it over my desk. When I was tempted to take a shortcut or not work as hard as I should, the sign reminded me of my goal.

I wish I could say that I achieved that goal, but an over-ambitious 21-credit-hour semester knocked me off track. I earned six A’s and one C+ that semester. Damned poetry class! I still remember the disheartening experience of calculating my maximum GPA after that semester and learning that magna cum laude was mathematically impossible, even if I earned A’s in my remaining classes. However, instead of giving up, I took the sign down and used a pair of scissors to create a sign that said “CUM LAUDE.”

* Magna cum laude was a GPA of 3.7-3.8. Cum laude was 3.6-3.7.

My daughter’s bulletin board, pictured above, reminded me of that sign and how visuals motivate the efforts necessary to achieve goals. Seeing our goals on paper flips a switch in our brains that paints a picture of the goal and a path to it. Through this mental exercise, we actually project ourselves to the place we want to be, and because we were there once in our minds, we know where we’re going. That’s why it’s easier to drive to familiar locations than it is to go some place new to us.

In an oft-cited study, Dr. Gail Matthews, a professor of psychology at Dominican University in California, found that goal-seekers are 42 percent more likely to achieve their goals when they write them down. You don’t have to create a sign, like my daughter and I did; you just need to put pen to paper.

Writing your goals makes them much more tangible than just thinking about them. While it’s still important to mentally visualize your goals; physically seeing them reinforces that visual. Goals kept in solitary mental confinement can get lost in everyday clutter, like worry and doubt. When goals are isolated in our thoughts, issues, both pressing and otherwise, can shove their way past the goal, until it is simply forgotten or conscientiously abandoned. That’s usually how many New Year’s resolutions die. We want to drop those extra 15 pounds, but paying the bills takes precedence over diet and exercise.

When a goal is in your head AND in front of your eyes, it’s much more difficult to neglect or ignore than when it’s kept secretly in your mind, but writing it down is just the first step. Place the written goal in a spot that can’t be ignored, like the corner of your computer monitor or on the mirror you stare into at the beginning and end of each day. The more times you see that goal, the stronger the image your mind creates around it.

You can also take it a step further by sharing your goals with other people, creating an accountability contingent that will ask you about your progress. Before long, you’ll become known as the guy who wants to run a marathon or the girl who wants to own a restaurant. It takes some guts to put yourself out there like that, but courage is an important part of successful goal pursuit, and it’s helpful to have others supporting you.

I did graduate cum laude, though it came down to the very end, and I barely made it. I was so close that I am convinced that, without that sign, as altered as it might have been, I wouldn’t have achieved my goal.

Try writing down a goal that is important to you. If it’s that important, it’s worth writing down. Even if you have to get out the scissors and modify it later, you’ll be closer than you would have been otherwise.

“It is better to aim high and miss than to aim low and hit.” – Les Brown

As an eighth-grader, my son watched the Nebraska High School State Wrestling Championships with me. We paid particular attention to the Class B heavyweight title match, as that was the class that we anticipated him competing in. A sophomore from Syracuse named Matt Clark won the championship that year, and it wasn’t difficult to do the math and know that Matt would be a junior during Patrick’s freshman season and a senior when Patrick was a sophomore.

If you want to be the best, you have to beat the best, so we decided that day to focus on beating the champ. Coincidentally, Patrick met Matt for the very first time the next day, when he traveled to Syracuse to compete in the youth district wrestling tournament. The day after that, Patrick clipped Matt’s picture from the newspaper’s gallery of champions and put it on his mirror, where it stayed for two years, as a reminder of the challenge ahead and the work that needed to be done.

During our weight-lifting sessions for two years, we dedicated extra sets and reps to the quest to beat the champ. “Do another for Matt,” I’d tell him in encouragement.” He’d respond after a particularly good set, “That was for Matt.” Meanwhile, his mother cleaned around the newspaper clipping on his bathroom mirror.

During his freshman year, Patrick narrowly lost his team’s wrestle-off to a talented senior, and spent the season competing on the junior varsity team, while we followed Matt’s undefeated and second state championship season. By now, Matt had developed into a 6’5” 305-pound offensive lineman with Division I interest. The quest wasn’t getting any easier, but Patrick was growing and developing too.

We saw Matt wrestle in person for the first time, one month into his senior season. In fact, we saw him set the state record for consecutive pins at 50. He was a massive athlete who moved like a wrestler half his size. I told my dad that he looked like a Kodiak bear taking down prey. Once he had an opponent on the mat, it was over. Meanwhile, Patrick, now a sophomore, came down with the flu, but managed to go 6-2 on the weekend. It was a large, multi-state dual team tournament, and since our teams didn’t compete against each other, the match-up would have to wait until the district tournament.

Two months later, on the first day of the district tournament, Patrick won both matches to qualify for a semi-final match against Matt Clark on day two. Two years of anticipation were about to burst. As if that wasn’t enough pressure, Matt entered the match needing one more pin to move into #2 nationally for consecutive pins at 68. Television cameras and radio stations were on hand to witness history. To Matt, Patrick was an obstacle to his record. To Patrick, Matt was the ultimate opponent and this match, the subject of dreams. No one but our family and a few close friends knew how big this was for Patrick.

The loss stung, but Patrick didn’t have time to sulk, because a loss in his next match would eliminate him from the state tournament. Fortunately, he bounced back quickly to pin his next two opponents and earn third place and a chance to compete in the state tournament. While the loss to Matt frustrated him, by the time he accepted his third place medal, he was smiling and eager for a rematch. He was realistic enough to know that he would have to wrestle the perfect match and perhaps get lucky to win a state championship, but he was prepared, and as I told him: luck happens when preparation meets opportunity.

Opportunity happened later that night when the brackets for the state tournament were released. Matt was on one side, and Patrick was on the other, so if both won three consecutive matches, a rematch would happen in the championship match in front of 15,000 people in the arena and many others watching on live television. It was the setting we talked about during our work-outs for two years.

Both Patrick and Matt won their first two matches on Thursday, the first day of the tournament, in dominating fashion. That night, Patrick was full of confidence, although a rival who had already beaten him twice awaited him in Friday night’s semi-final. He thought that he had figured out how to beat his semi-final opponent, but he was wrong.

On Friday night, the goal that had motivated him for two years died on the mat in front of thousands of people, just one match short.

If we set our goals high enough, we expose ourselves to painful failures like this, when we realize that the goal that was so important to us for so long is now unattainable. Failure can crush us at this vulnerable time, if we lose perspective. However, it is also at these moments that the seeds of many of life’s greatest triumphs are planted, if we can retain the determination and motivation that brought us to striking distance of the goal.

Patrick woke up in a foul mood on Saturday, like someone had stolen something from him. I don’t particularly like these moods, but I’ve come to recognize them as a signal that a 16-year-old is highly motivated to perform at his highest level and can’t mask his emotion. Third place was now the target, and winning twice was the path. Two first-period pins, the second over the fifth-rated wrestler in 38 seconds, showed that the passion was strong.

Third best is not where he wanted to be – no one wants to be third best, but there were two wrestlers better than him this year, and by the end of the tournament, he knew that. As he accepted his third-place medal, happiness shined from his face. The two-year quest to beat Matt Clark was over, and he was going to have to take Matt’s picture down in defeat, but he had made huge strides toward becoming a championship wrestler.

When Patrick set that goal, he was a 14-year-old 220-pound eighth-grader who had wrestled maybe 20 matches over four months. He was as close to Matt in wrestling as I am to Ernest Hemingway in writing. What happened in those 730 days, however, was truly amazing. More importantly, we were back in the gym on day 731 – this time without Matt as motivation. Now that he’s stood on the championship platform, the goal is a better, higher view in 365 days.

Related Facts:

Matt Clark won his third state championship the next day, 3-1 over Justin Hennessey, a junior from Waverly. Matt won, but his consecutive pin streak was stopped at 72. He’ll play football at South Dakota State University next year.

Hennessey, Patrick’s semi-final opponent, lost only to Clark and the undefeated Class C heavyweight champion this season.

Patrick enjoyed getting to know Matt and Justin, as well as their families, and says both are great guys from great families.

With two pins to close out the state tournament, and three in the state dual tournament the next weekend, Patrick’s consecutive pin streak is at five.

25% of people who make New Year’s resolutions maintain them less than one week

another 4% make it just one more week

by the end of the first month, 36% have given up

at six months, just 46% are still adhering to the promises they made to themselves at the beginning of the year

only 8 percent remain committed to their resolutions for the entire year.

Fewer than half of us even try.

If you have beaten the odds, and your resolution remains intact, congratulations! Don’t quit. If you haven’t made a resolution or it hasn’t worked out for you, hope is not lost, if you don’t let failure intimidate you into a resolution-free year.

While the beginning of the year is a good time to start a self-improvement mission, it’s not the only time, and just because you dropped the ball early, the game can continue, if you pick it back up. 300-plus days is too long to wait to try again.

First, we need to acknowledge that failure isn’t exclusive to us. The statistics above bear that out. When we try something that is new to us, like dieting or budgeting our money, we’re stepping away from the comfort of familiarity, we’re pushing our boundaries and we’re exposing ourselves to failure. These are good things, because they help us grow and enhance our experiences.

In strength-training parlance, this is called the last set (* explanation below), and I’ve been teaching my son about it. When you have pushed yourself hard in previous sets, it’s tempting to take it easy on the last set, which is exactly the wrong thing to do, because the last set is when the most development happens. The last set should have a success rate of less than 50%. This is when you add more weight than you know you can lift, and though you’ve never done it before, you convince yourself that you can lift it.

Patrick gets mad when he doesn’t get all the reps in his last set, but I assure him that he accomplished more by trying and failing than he would have by lifting a comfortable weight. Besides, he can try again during the next workout. When he does get all of the reps, the sense of accomplishment motivates future workouts. He experiences growth and success when he exposes himself to failure.

Second, we need to accept that failure isn’t synonymous with defeat. Famous inventor Thomas Edison was fond of saying, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” If you didn’t exercise three times per week, like you said you would at the beginning of the year, don’t give up. Just figure out why you didn’t exercise as consistently as you would like. Do you need to do a better job of scheduling your time? Do you need to go to bed earlier? Do you need to work on your motivation? Repeat the cycle of planning, trying, evaluating and trying again, until you are successful.

Lastly, find some way of optimizing accountability. Many of us find it much easier to make excuses to ourselves than to make them to others. I’m guilty of this one, so I tell my wife what I have resolved to do, and you better believe that she holds me accountable. Not only will she quiz me about my progress toward my goals, she has trained our kids to do it too. I often write, even when I don’t feel like it, because I know that someone is going to ask me about it during dinner that night, and it’s a lot more pleasant to talk about progress than it is to make excuses.

If you are more comfortable keeping your resolutions private, it’s still important to optimize accountability. Writing down your goals and tracking your progress in writing is a very good way to do this, and my good friend Jeff Beals has some excellent advice to help with this, in his recent column, This Is Why You Don’t Accomplish All Your Goals.

New Year’s resolutions have helped many achieve goals that were previously out of their reach and to achieve them more quickly than they otherwise would have. The self-improvement opportunity that a resolution provides is much too powerful to limit to an annual event or to abandon because of an early mistake. Make this year as good as it can possibly be by resolving to do something that you know you need to do.

* Most strength-training sessions consist of sets of repetitions of a particular exercise, with short rests between. As an example, an athlete might do two sets of ten repetitions of a leg press, i.e. he does ten leg presses followed by a break, followed by ten more leg presses.

Magna cum laude – that was my goal for graduation from undergraduate school. Magna cum laude was an academic distinction earned with a cumulative 3.8 grade point average. A 3.9 would earn you summa cum laude, but a C and even a D+ in my freshman year made that impossible. If I did everything correctly and earned almost entirely A’s in my junior and senior year, I would graduate magna cum laude.

To motivate and remind myself, I made a large sign for my bedroom. MAGNA CUM LAUDE in bright neon blue hung above my desk and glowed in the lamp light during my late-night study sessions. Half way through my junior year, after a 21-credit-hour semester in which I earned six A’s and a C+, I did some math and realized that magna cum laude simply wasn’t going to be possible. The C+ had mathematically eliminated me. My magna cum laude sign stared down at me as I scratched out the numbers.

I could take down the sign and excuse myself for missing my goal OR I could readjust my goals and charge on. I did some more math, and learned that if I closed out my college career with no more than two Bs, I could earn a 3.7, which was a cum laude distinction. I put away the calculator and pulled out my scissors. Before long, a CUM LAUDE sign hung above desk. I still had a goal to guide and drive me, and just as important, it was attainable.

The summer is a good time to look at the sign hanging figuratively over your desk. Even if you didn’t go through a resolution exercise at the beginning of the year, you likely had an idea of how you would like 2012 to end. Are you on track to hit your goals? Have you evaluated your goals and determined what you would need to do to achieve them by the end of the year? Are your goals still attainable?

In my company, I personally review with each employee his or her performance every quarter. Years of doing this have given us solid metrics that allow us to link activity with productivity. I know what each employee must do every day to reach the goals we mutually set. Measuring this activity and evaluating its impact on measurable results gives our employees a clear path to success. Even more, it allows them to easily identify corrections to their current path, before it is too late.

Too often, we wait until it is too late to make adjustments that would allow us to achieve our goals. We might sense that something is wrong – that our performance and effort aren’t what they need to be – but we don’t have the courage to face these shortcomings. The courage to address shortcomings is one of the most important traits of a successful person, but very few people ever master it. It’s much easier to celebrate successes than it is to own up to failures, but when we try to convince ourselves that everything is good, although we suspect the opposite might be true, we stifle progress toward our goals. Only through consistent, courageous self-assessment can we give ourselves an above-average chance of reaching our goals.

Of course, self-assessment isn’t always painful. Sometimes, these assessments will show that we are actually out-performing our expectations and that our goals are more attainable than we realized. Use these positive discoveries as motivation to charge ahead and consider making your goals even larger.

Before the summer is over, take the time and find the courage to evaluate the progress you are making toward your goals. Make sure that your goals are still attainable, and that you are on the path toward attaining them. If not, adjust now, before your goal slides out of your reach.